Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 320: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

312 HER ROYAL LOVER. kerchief that Boris Michailowitch had hastily car- ried to his mouth. Heiligenthal shuddered in all his being. How quickly the life of a man is taken! At the all-powerful voice of his conscience, com- pletely tortured by remorse, at the sincere cry of his repentant soul, the young man felt for the first time his vile and egotistical instincts dissolve. Everybody was acquainted with the king’s mar- riage with Najeska Ivanowna; it was not then of the wife of the Prince de Mineleko, but only of her who had been so, that Heiligenthal would have to speak. | Boris Michailowitch, summoning up all his failing strength, continued: “T am convinced now that it was you, and not the king, who penetrated to my—to the apartment of Madame de Mineleko, and that which I then believed to be a dream was a reality.” Heiligenthal was silent. Had he desired to speak he had not been able, so strong and insurmountable was the emotion which compressed his throat. “You must recollect how oppressive the evening of that day was. During the afternoon I had had a terrible neuralgia. The physician had rubbed me vigorously with a chloroform mixture. Was the dose too powerful? Ido not know. I have always been a prey to a singular nervous agitation. Al- though very strongly under the influence of the soporific, it was impossible for me to take a mo- ment’s repose. Tortured, palpitating as I was with the agony of the most excessive jealousy, my entire thought was concentrated upon the love that the king was openly evincing for my young wife, and aside from this fixed idea my mind was incapable of thinking. Gomicbooksi co m